Periphery, p.21
Periphery, page 21
She’d been fanning herself under the tree for nearly thirty minutes, her anger peculating like the sweat running down her back and armpits and the crack of her ass. She fanned herself with the handful of fliers she was supposed to turn over to Mark Legosi for the open house, and as her anger deepened her fanning quickened. After another ten minutes, the papers were a fluttering blur.
This was the last time she was ever doing that man a favor. Four-thirty he said. He promised he’d be here no later than four-thirty. Now it was—she checked the clock on her phone—5:10! And he was nowhere to be found. He was probably sitting in his nice, cool office, shooting the shit with some old high school buddy while she was stuck out here. Why couldn’t he have gone to Kinko’s on his own lunch hour? And who scheduled open-houses for five-thirty on a weekday anyway? Who did he think was going to show up? No one wanted to house hunt after a long day at work.
A strand of Spanish moss brushed her cheek and she swatted it away. She noticed an ant on her arm and she swatted that, too. The tree was a bug magnet, but it was the only shade on the site.
Mark hadn’t even bothered to give her the combination for the lockbox. Oh, I’ll be there precisely at four-thirty, he promised. You won’t even have to get out of your car. Four-thirty my ass. What had possessed her to wear pants today? She was broiling alive in these wool slacks. The first thing she was going to do when she got home was jump in an ice-cold shower and stay there until her teeth chattered.
She reached back, flicked another strand of moss off her shoulder and adjusted her bra strap. She should have just stayed in her car. Her clothes were plastered to her. And she still had to get ready for tonight. If she had to keep Jimmy waiting there would be hell to pay. She checked the time again. Nearly quarter past five.
This was absolutely the last favor she was ever going to do for that prick. The last. The fliers were disintegrating in her sweating palm. And she was being harassed by every bug in the neighborhood. She swatted a beetle from her leg. Two more minutes and she was out of here. She’d leave the fliers on the front steps and if they blew away, too bad. Nobody was going to show up for this stupid thing anyway.
Something tickled the back of her neck, slipping down her blouse. Damn it! She had to get away from this freaking tree.
She took a step forward, yanking at the tendril-like thing under her collar and was yanked back to the trunk. Amanda let out an outraged squawk and dropped the fliers. She spun, one hand still at her neck, the other sweeping the air above her as if clearing cobwebs from her hair. Her reaching fingers strummed across half-a-dozen more strands before encountering something that felt like an enormous, lolling tongue.
With a cry of revulsion, she tried to pull her arm back, but it was caught. She felt more tendrils brushing across her face and the one down her back looping around to encircle her waist. A shirt button popped loose, then a second. She saw it arc to the ground trailing a wispy piece of thread. Within seconds she was covered in tendrils. The sensation was like being caught in a net.
Despite all this, it wasn’t until she looked up and saw what was in the branches above her that she began to scream. In response the net tightened, heaving her several inches off the ground. The more she flailed, the more constricting it became. She kicked against the trunk as she was pulled higher, knocking off both shoes and sending herself into a momentary spin.
In her struggles, she hit the automatic redial on the phone she was still clutching. The number it dialed before falling from her suddenly relaxing grip was Mark Legosi’s. Mark had fallen asleep on his office couch after a long, liquored lunch with investment partners. Although he had slept through the previous three phone calls from Amanda, the last one woke him just moments before Mr. Goldman charged through the door looking for the assessments he had been promised the day before, thus avoiding a rather embarrassing situation.
It was the last favor Amanda Silverton would ever do for him.
Sixteen
They showed him what they would do. Even as he struggled to free himself from the restraints pinning him to the chamber wall, Andrew understood this wasn’t a dream; it was a vision of the future, the near future, a black spike of premonition pounded into the center of his mind.
They took Grace first. He heard her screams long before he caught sight of the glistening thing approaching through the gloom, dragging his struggling wife by her hair through its own slime trail. Ringing the chamber in a semicircle were the Mechanisms of Nil, humming in anticipation of their next meal.
Andrew tried to call out to her, let her know she wasn’t alone in this nightmare, for he understood, somehow, that this was her premonition as well. He and Grace were both trapped in the same web, trashing against wills of immense malevolence. But the sinuous loop around his neck tightened in response to his efforts, choking off his breath. All he could do was watch as the creature glided into the center of the room, swept the husk of a previous victim off the black slab and positioned Grace in its place.
Her arms and legs were clamped; her head immobilized. The rig pivoted to vertical and now Grace did see him. What he saw in her eyes was what he had seen in Katie’s as he handed her the water bottle in the intersection, a plea to pull her out of this nightmare. But he could do nothing. He bucked and thrashed against the wall, accomplished nothing, sagged in exhaustion.
The Mechanisms had already harvested thousands, but their appetites were bottomless. The remains of prior subjects littered the floor in a charnel house jumble of human wreckage, hollowed out vessels still technically alive, twitching occasionally as the lower brain functions flickered out. The Mechanisms’ collectors unfurled toward Grace, tapeworm heads swelling and smacking in anticipation.
Andrew tried to turn away. The restraints held him fast. He tried to shut his eyes, but the lids were suddenly gone, flayed off with a precision honed by endless repetition. The collectors positioned themselves around his wife with a lover’s intimacy, nuzzling up to temple and throat, breast, belly and upper thigh, pausing inches from her flesh as if to inhale her scent.
Within this poised moment, a new sound arose and his distress crescendoed into something Andrew had no words for, an anguish so encompassing it seemed to crystallize out of his very bones, sending shards of torment exploding from every inch of skin. The screams approaching down the hall were high and piercing, a child’s terrified wails.
Anna clawed uselessly at the floor as the beast dragged her by one leg into the room. Her nails were already bloody ruins. The instant she entered the chamber her eyes found his.
“Daddy!” She stretched her ruined hands toward him. “Daddy, help meee!!”
He would have gone mad then—the white glare of insanity a final refuge from his impotent desperation—had the vetro offalate allowed it. They did not. He could feel their will pressed against his lucidity, keeping it constrained and intact. He saw everything they would do to his wife and daughter. He could not look away. And when they were done with him, when they had temporarily satisfied their malice, they flung him back into consciousness with a careless toss.
Andrew tumbled out of the cot, hit the floor gulping air and began swatting the space around his head in an attempt to dispel what he had seen, as if the images were a swarm of hornets skittering into his nose and mouth and ears.
Never. Never would he allow such a violation. Better to smother them both in their sleep than risk an end like that. Better to take their lives with a bullet than allow their essence, their souls, to be absorbed by those parasitic machines. Dear god, might some part of them survive the transition? Might their last moments of awareness be from inside a storage tank, awaiting a final consumption at the vetro’s leisure?
Andrew’s breath returned in hitches, not enough to scream, barely enough to keep from passing out once again.
Grace! Had she really shared the premonition? Was she even now convulsing on the bed as consciousness crept back on timid mouse feet? What time was it? What day? The vision had scrambled everything.
Facts then: he was in jail. Andrew touched his battered face. He and his father had been attacked by a man named Theodore Hillsdale, a low-level drug mule and muscle-for-hire. Hillsdale was now strapped to a bed at Tampa General, recovering from a fractured skull and broken collarbone. His father was there as well, his injuries severe but not life-threatening, at least according to Dr. Cho. And his wife and daughter were dead. They had died screaming.
No!
Andrew curled into a ball and hammered the back of his head against the floor. The blow sent a clarifying jolt reverberating through his skull. That hadn’t happened. Andrew reached out, grabbed the leg of the cot and tried to pull himself off the floor. He struggled into a sitting position and rested his swollen, sweat-slicked face on the mattress.
The vetro wanted to convince him he was nothing, not an insect, not a gnat, not even a germ. But if they were confident of victory, why expend so much energy swatting at him? A lion wouldn’t stalk a worm. A shark wouldn’t menace a sea sponge. Was it simply a sadistic desire to torment? Then why recruit agents to kill them? Hillsdale said the vetro offalate wanted him to do it quickly. That kind of urgency suggested only one thing.
“Scared,” he croaked into the sheet. “Scared, scared, scared.”
“Andy?”
“Fuck off.”
“Mr. Tate.”
Andrew eased his head off the mattress. He was facing away from the cell door but did not turn to verify the voice was real. Instead, he simply waited, staring numbly at the wall. If they had sent another of their disciples to finish him off, there would be no escape. He tried to sniff indifferently, but his nose was clogged with dried blood.
“Andy, you need to get up.”
With a series of awkward shuffles, Andrew pivoted around. One of the guards who had dragged his cellmate out prior to his father’s visit stood in the doorway with another guard he did not recognize.
“Here to kill me?”
The officers exchanged looks.
“Look at his face,” Booker explained to the second guard, then, addressing Andrew: “No, sir. You don’t need to worry about Reece here. He’s joined the forces of light.”
Booker paused, clearly expecting a word of gratitude or at least relief from Andrew, but all he could do was stare.
“Anyway,” Booker resumed after a second glance at Reece, “we’re here to escort you to booking. You’re out of here.”
“What?” Andrew looked from face to face, searching for some hint of deception.
“You’re being released.”
“Someone posted my bail?”
“Apparently. Come on, man,” he offered Andrew his hand. “We’re not going to throw you off the roof. Promise.”
Andrew grasped the offered hand and together he and Reece pulled him to his feet.
“Do you know who?” he asked.
“They don’t tell us that. All I know is that you’re being processed out.” Booker held Andrew at arm’s length and examined him, his eyes roving from head to foot. “Reece,” he said quietly, “go down and grab him some clean scrubs.”
The other guard nodded and disappeared into the hall.
“You’ll be alright,” Booker said in a tone of almost fatherly solace. “This place can take its toll on anyone. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
It was only after Booker had settled him on the edge of the cot that he realized his crotch was a sodden mass of darkened fabric. At some point during his nightmare premonition, Andrew had pissed himself.
An hour later he stood squinting and blinking into the mid-morning glare, the caustic stench of burning vegetation causing him to gulp and swallow.
“This can’t be good.”
“It isn’t.” The escorting officer covered his nose and mouth with a cloth pulled from his belt. “Lutz is under a mandatory evacuation. Fire’s grown to thirty thousand acres. They closed a three-mile section of I-75 a few hours ago. Zero visibility. Local news has gone to wall-to-wall coverage.”
“What are they saying?”
“If the wind picks up, we're screwed. But don’t panic. Reinforcements are on the way.”
“Comforting.”
“You say so.” He turned and reentered the jail.
Andrew had been incarcerated for just twenty-six hours, but the world he returned to was not the one he had left. The oppressive haze hanging in the air bleached the sky a featureless white, draining the color from even nearby objects and giving the cars at the far end of the parking lot the gray vagueness of vast distance. Tampa Fire Rescue would be in full crisis mode by now and getting their marching orders from the Department of Forestry.
How many firefighters were battling the blaze? Hundreds, certainly. Maybe even a thousand. And more on the way. He wasn’t sure how that would affect his plan. If all eyes were focused on the wildfire, making a second, bigger attempt to blow up a coil might be easier. The police would have their hands full with evacuations, traffic control, logistical support for the various agencies pouring into the area. Calls about suspicious characters digging holes near old property markers might be dismissed as too trivial to investigate.
Maybe.
Of course, he was assuming the box of Trenchrite was still in his trunk. Since he hadn’t been charged with possession of explosives it was a reasonable assumption, but he could take nothing for granted. What had once been the foundation of his life had narrowed to a cable swaying over the abyss. All he could do was pinwheel his arms wildly in an attempt to remain centered.
Andrew shaded his eyes with a hand and scanned the parking lot, wondering who had bailed him out. Grace? He doubted she would have changed her mind so quickly, even if she had shared his nightmare. Little Billy? Where would he get the money? Katie Fife? How would she have known he was in jail?
Andrew removed his phone and saw he had a dozen missed texts from Little Billy. He’d read them later. Right now, he needed a ride to the impound lot. He scrolled through his contacts, found Katie’s number and dialed. The smoke was stinging his swollen eyes and he dabbed at them gingerly with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Boo.”
He spun, heart in his mouth. Katie stood behind him with her vibrating phone in one hand. When she saw his face, her smile stretched into a rictus of appalled shock.
“Oh!” Her free hand rose as if to touch his cheek and Andrew pulled back.
“I’m fine,” he said, re-pocketing his phone. “I guess you’re the one who bailed me out? How’d you know?”
After a moment, she shook her head. “Not me. We didn’t know where you’d disappeared to. Will was afraid it was the bilantu. Or someone working for the vetro.” Her eyes raked his face. “Is that what happened? Did someone try to kill you?”
“Yeah. Charming fellow. They promised him seventy-two virgins if he chopped me and my dad up. Or maybe it was seventy-two ewes. He didn’t seem too picky.”
“Seventy-two mes?”
“Never mind.”
“Your dad, is he…”
“In the hospital, but he should pull through. Little Billy with you?”
“Waiting at the car.”
“I need a ride to the impound lot to get my car. The rest of the Trenchrite’s still in the trunk.”
They set off across the parking lot with Katie in the lead. After a few steps, she said, “It’s starting, Andy. The convergence or whatever you want to call it. The xalantracoils, they’re birthing.”
“Birthing?”
“We don’t know what else to call it. You’ll understand once you see it.”
“If you didn’t bail me out, how did you know I was here?”
“He told us.”
They were approaching Katie’s CRV. Leaning against one door was Little Billy, his head inclined in apparent conversation toward a second man also leaning against the vehicle. When they saw him approaching they took a step forward. Andrew stopped, mouth agape, debating whether to bolt or stand his ground. If he was fast he might make it back to the jail’s entrance before the other man was on him.
“That’s right,” Sid Langston said. “I sprang your ass.” He appraised Andrew’s condition with professional detachment. “Just in time, from the looks of it.”
Andrew took a sliding step back. “Why?”
“Because it’s all gone to shit out here, and I’m not talking about the wildfire. People are dying in ways none of us have ever seen before. Wounds like something out of a National Geographic special, bites and slashes and who the fuck knows what else.
"Survivors claim monsters sprang out of their hedges and tried to tear them to pieces. I believe them. So do a lot of others, especially the ones who’ve seen these things for themselves. If you have a plan to fight them—and your partners here say you do—I want in.”
“How did you know to call Katie?”
“See, you think I’m just another dumb beefcake, but I actually have a brain in this pretty little head. Her name was in the newspaper article and her number’s listed. When she came to see you at the station, I figured it might have something to do with what the homeless guy was ranting about that day. After these attacks began, I decided maybe he really was seeing monsters.
"Which means your old man might not be off his rocker after all. Been debating whether to bail you out ever since. She convinced me it was worth it.”
He pointed his chin toward Katie.
“They both did. So,” Langston clapped his hands, rubbed his palms, “what’s the plan, boss? How we gonna to make things right?”
Andrew didn’t trust him. His sudden change-of-heart felt like a ruse to lure them all to some secluded spot where he could do what he wanted without interference. Physically, no one could match Langston and Andrew’s recent encounter with a hulking opponent had left him skittish and paranoid.
Still, he couldn’t spend all his time looking over his shoulder, second-guessing every person he met. If he was to die, it would be on his feet facing the inevitable, not curled into a ball, waiting for the final blow to strike.
